The stag and wolf sculptures were executed and shown in the WGN network television series Outsiders. Art Designer Jonathan Carlson and creator & Executive Producer Peter Mattei wanted to create large-scale projects that would allude to the ritualism and otherworldliness of the culture of the characters that inhabit Shay Mountain. Given pictures of outsider art and works created with natural materials, I was given the creative freedom to produce works that reflected my own aesthetics and knowledge of anatomy and movement. To create the works I had teams that recovered salvaged materials from urban and rural settings, using what we found at construction and demolition sites as well as what we could usurp in the woods around the set locations. The works were executed quickly with support of the carpenters and scenic teams of IATSE 489. A shout out to the greens department, JT, Alan, Bubba & Sean, whom I could not have completed the sculptures without. I became very interested in the juxtaposition of the man-made using pieces of furniture and architectural details with natural elements like tree trunks and unusual branches. Looking at the works of Louise Nevelson & Deborah Butterfield, I wanted to create my own aesthetic and exude a ritualistic nature/mystic to the pieces.

The Wolf, nearly 18 feet tall, opened the series and was constructed in two days. The piece was meant to be an effigy burnt as part of a bacchanalistic celebration. I created a base form and then worked my way away from the inner structure eventually filling the sculpture with material that would burn rapidly producing a glow within the eyes and rib cage. I sat with firefighters during the burn and they commented that the structure burned well and imploded properly making it one of the safer structures that they had seen burned. The Stag was more complex in nature and was meant to be an addition to a sacred area on Shay Mountain. We decided that this was an area meant for meditation and the series closed with the police narrowing in on the people of the mountain discovering the sculpture at the end. The Stag, standing at 25 feet tall, is more nuanced and the architectural details writhe in and out of the natural materials. Construction was longer, about five days, and material sourcing was difficult using over a ton of materials. The Stag is a crucial location in the upcoming second season and was actually moved up a hill.